My Plan:
- Deliver more high quality affordable homes
- Ensure developers create sustainable communities
- Introduce a 'Community Right of Appeal'
A home is one of the most important things for any of us to have. Home is your own space, a place for a family to grow. Today we have too few to keep village communities viable and too many expensive houses in our towns. Our planning system does not work. The housing stock we need simply isn’t there. I have been campaigning for years for communities to have a legal say in both the number and location of house building.
We need more homes which are both affordable and in the right place. Communities must be able to appeal development decisions. The plot of farming land at Wolborough known as NA3 is just such an example. Environmentally special it creates a green lung for Newton Abbot. Its fate hangs in the balance. Councils need the power to say no to developers that will only build executive homes and who do not build affordable homes and the infrastructure to support them. Families living in B&Bs because no housing is available is not acceptable.
And the quality of the housing built needs to go up. My post bag is full of mail from new home owners suffering from shoddy workmanship – wobbly staircases, bouncy floors, noisy rooves, unfinished roads and much more. The building regulations and inspection regime needs a fundamental overhaul. Councils and builders must be held accountable. The link between house prices and local wages must be re-established. My fight will continue
